Orthopaedic surgical procedures exist to treat a wide variety of conditions of the bones and joints of the human body. For example, procedures exist to remove damaged or diseased tissues such as bone tumors. Procedures also exist to replace damaged or diseased tissues such as joint replacement surgery in which the articular ends of the bones forming a joint are removed and replaced with prosthetic bearing components. During such procedures, tissue is removed from the surgical site using tissue cutting instruments such as saws, drills, shavers, and grinders. Many surgical procedures are now performed with surgical navigation systems in which sensors detect tracking elements attached in known relationship to an object in the surgical suite such as a surgical instrument, implant, or patient body part. The sensor information is fed to a computer that then triangulates the position of the tracking elements within the surgical navigation system coordinate system. Thus the computer can resolve the position and orientation of the object and display the position and orientation for surgeon guidance. For example, the position and orientation can be shown superimposed on an image of the patient's anatomy obtained via X-ray, CT scan, ultrasound, or other imaging technology.